Set in Stone
by GodlessTide
Summary: An adventurous Snapper and her dedicated Nocturne companion manage to infiltrate a stretch of the Forgotten Cave's myriad of cavern networks that none before them had been able to access, for fear of the Serthis that guarded it so heavily. But what they find inside defies the expectations of either dragon, and might put their lives in grave danger...
1. Chapter 1: The Explorers

Darkness clung to the cavern walls like a slick coat of fresh oil. At scarce intervals slim beams of sunlight broke through the stone ceiling and sliced through the shadows with the striking ease of a Wildclaw's talon piercing a foe's flesh. Moisture dripped down at a steady pace; anywhere else the noise of the small droplets of water would barely have been noticeable, if at all, but in the caverns it seemed as though even the lightest sound was amplified tenfold. The dripping water, occasional flutter of smoothly-scaled wings and rhythmic thudding of a heavy dragon's cautiously slow footsteps made for a particularly unsettling symphony.

The scaled head of a Nocturne peeked around the corner of one of the cave tunnels. Darimi inspected the expanse of the tunnel up ahead, quickly assessing whether or not it was safe to proceed; seeing no danger ahead of herself and her partner she quickly darted back around the corner to face the fellow dragon that had come to a halt behind her. The Nocturne greeted her partner with a hasty nod.

"Looks like it's all clear," Darimi confirmed in a soft tone of voice. The dark-scaled Snapper to whom she was speaking breathed forth a heavy sigh.

"That's a relief…" Xelis responded. She looked up at Darimi with a light tilt of her head. Having met her partner's gaze Darimi instinctively tilted her own head a little in turn, as was typical of her breed. She seemed to shrug a little, drawing her lengthy wings in a little closer to herself.

"I don't understand. Why aren't they here? They've been giving everyone such trouble but we've not had a glimpse of even one..." she mumbled.

"You're complaining that they're not here, then?" Xelis somewhat jokingly asked. "I told you before. They'll be rotating their ambush placements at this time. Every couple of days each smaller group of them either moves to a new position from which to attack the likes of us if we pass by or allow other members of their sect to take their place. I don't quite understand why that's the case but after having observed their movements for a few weeks I've been able to work out that this is the safest time to sneak in, if we were ever to get in here at all."

"It does surprise me… I thought the Serthis were more of the type to remain in an ambush location far longer than just a couple of days," Darimi attempted to consider, her scaly brow furrowing as she attempted to fathom the information.

"That is an excellent point, quite correct at that…" Xelis agreed, with a solemn nod and a hint of worry creeping back into her otherwise relatively confident tone. "For all my journeying I can't say I've ever seen or heard of Serthis who rotate their forces so regularly. They guard this stretch of the caverns with such infuriating dedication…"

"What do you suppose the reason could be?" Darimi asked her, once again mimicking the previous tilt of her partner's head though Xelis had since straightened up her stance again. "Perhaps they're simply protecting theirs and the Swiftfoot herd's territorial claim?"

"That may be, but not even the Centaurs that call these caverns home guard this particular stretch of tunnel so viciously… I would think that there's something more here that we do not know about and that they do not want us to find," Xelis surmised. She quickly shook her head. "But that's not of our concern now. We may not have much time before the next Serthis group arrive to set up their ambush here… and dare I say it if they were to find us having gotten this far in I don't think we'd be getting out unharmed, if we were to get out alive at all."

Darimi straightened up a little and gave another quick nod. "You're right," she replied. "Let's take note of what we can while we have the chance."

Xelis nodded in response as she moved past her taller companion, carefully padding around the corner to advance into the tunnels they'd not been able to gain access to until now. Darimi quickly followed suit; as she moved she reached to the scroll case that hung by her waist and pulled out some parchment on which to take note of the various features and factors of note in these caves. To most dragons it would have been difficult to tell one cavern from another, overlooking small details and assuming each one to be the same. The keen eye of an Earth Flight dragon such as Xelis, however, was able to better discern the details that would set certain caverns and tunnels apart. Though they'd not have time to fully map the expanses there, the Snapper and her devoted Nocturne companion would have the chance to make a log containing the most crucial information in regards to this hitherto relatively unexplored place.

As they cautiously advanced Xelis continually glanced up, down and around at the rocky cavern walls that surrounded them. Given she was better suited to spotting and citing the appropriate name of rock formations or other points worth noting down, it was she who took charge of discerning them while her Nocturne companion, being far better suited to writing things down with her more nimble hands, would nod in due course and dutifully write each spoken detail down. This process started just as the both of them had expected it to. Occasionally they would pause to listen if a sound caught their attention, not wanting to be caught by the returning Serthis when they came back, only to resume their work when they were satisfied they still had precious minutes in which to log the cavern's features.

"We should probably start heading back," Darimi eventually advised. Xelis frowned; she was reluctant to leave after having become so engrossed in her enthusiastic exploration but wasn't naive enough to think that Darimi didn't have a good point. After a moment's hesitation she quietly sighed and gave a slow nod of her head.

"You're right," she responded. "It wouldn't be wise to stay much longer." She moved to turn around, careful not to brush against or disturb the cavern wall and alert the returning Serthis that dragons had indeed been there; doing so would have jeopardised any future attempts to get back here, which Xelis fully intended to do whenever they were next able in order to make more progress in logging the untouched tunnels.

"We've made good progress today," Darimi assured her, folding up the parchment on which she'd been writing and tucking it back into her scroll case. "You should be proud - we're the first to have gotten this far past the Serthis here. We're the first to log and take note of these particular caverns."

Xelis managed a smile and glanced up at the taller dragon, bowing her head for a brief moment in a grateful, respective nod that the Nocturne mimicked in due course. "Quite right. We've done our clan proud. I couldn't have done it without you, Darimi."

Darimi smiled fondly as she finished securing the scroll case resting by her hip. She leaned down momentarily to treat her companion to a gentle, affectionate bump of her snout. It was in moments such as this, with the Snapper smiling so sincerely and with that gleam of discovery in her eye, that she was at her most endearing.

"You know it's no problem, Xelis," she assured her. "I promised you I'll accompany you on each of your expeditions, and I plan to live up to that promise. For now, though, we ought to move out of here so we can show the clan what we've been able to log."

Xelis nodded in turn and the two dragons turned around, ready to head back up the way they had come in order to avoid being confronted by the Serthis they knew would not take long to arrive on the scene. The devoted Snapper held her head high as they prepared to leave. Her mind was alive with the thought of how impressed her clan would be when she returned to them. Surely they would be proud of herself and her partner for having succeeded where so many dragons before them had failed.

Her thoughts were interrupted, however, when she glanced over at Darimi who seemed to be lagging along beside her. She was walking at an uncharacteristically slow pace, with her head pointed down as she gazed with odd focus upon the ground at her feet. Quite suddenly, before Xelis could speak, Darimi motioned with a clawed hand for her to stop where she was. Bizarrely she did not shift her gaze from the rocky cavern floor.

"Something's not right," Darimi muttered.

"What's wrong?" Xelis asked, with a concerned tone of voice. She lifted her head for a moment to sniff the air; she could neither smell nor hear any approaching Serthis, so quickly knew that wasn't what had caused her friend's worry. She turned her head back towards her companion. "We really should get goi-"

Darimi interrupted her, raising a claw quickly to her mouth and shushing her with a soft hiss. A confused Xelis watched on as the Nocturne maintained her focus on the floor beneath their feet. Steadily she knelt down, her slender frame shifting to allow her head to slowly move closer and closer to the ground, and tilted her head to the side so as to press her ear to the floor. Xelis was unable to find the words to put to her partner as to inquire what in the world she was doing. Granted she'd long since known her partner to have her quirks, but this was definitely not something she'd ever been observed to do.

"It can't be…" Darimi whispered. "I can't believe we didn't notice it sooner!"

"What is it?" a well and truly baffled Xelis asked. She was acutely aware of the fact that they were not in the safest place in which to linger.

" _Listen_!" Darimi urged her, gesturing for her to do the same as she was doing at that moment. Xelis did just that, albeit somewhat hesitantly, and lowered her head to the cavern floor in turn. She glanced over to Darimi who raised up one clawed hand and knocked it thrice against the ground. She paused, as though to allow Xelis a moment to think, then did so again. Three knocks of a clawed hand against stone should have made little noise. When Darimi did it, however, the sound resonated far more than one would have expected.

Xelis' eyes slowly widened as the realisation of what her partner had worked out hit her with the force of a furious Imperial and shook her to her core. She looked up to her partner, finding herself able to utter just two words in relation to the revelation they'd just come to.

"It's... _hollow_!"

Darimi gave a solemn nod in response. Her eyes held a hint of concern within their gaze as she did know the risk they were at while lingering in such a place. However there was an increasingly glimmer of curiosity in her expression, one she undoubtedly got from her Snapper associate who had also steadily begun to grin as excitement began to run its way through their veins. They'd already made quite the achievement in what they'd been able to log, but it seemed they'd come across an even more incredible discovery quite literally right under their noses.

"We _need_ to come back here," Darimi eagerly whispered. "We can't possibly just leave this to go without investigation."

"My thoughts exactly," Xelis agreed with an enthusiastic nod. "We need to hurry out now lest the Serthis catch us here… but now we know when we'll have an opening to infiltrate this stretch of the caverns again. Don't worry, we _will_ return to learn more about what's here."

With a nod, Darimi and Xelis began to hurry back the way from which they had come with an increased vigor in their step. The sheer mystery of it all and fuelled their shared curiosity; it burned within them as though it were the Flamecaller's very own fire as they hurried to take their leave. The prospect of what could possibly lay beneath the cavern ground both mystified and intrigued them.

The day of their return there could not come soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2: The Discovery

It was merely one day later when the devoted explorers made their way back into the Forgotten Cave's vast cavern network in order to more closely investigate the find they had made at the end of their first explorative journey there. The two had, naturally, been mutually enthused about returning to the site and discerning more about that which they'd not been able to investigate much of the previous time. Their clanmates had been practically drenched in their raw enthusiasm and ponderings when they had returned home, to their annoyance. At the time Xelis and Darimi had been more or less oblivious to that fact. There were far more important things afoot here; whatever they would uncover would surely be something no one had ever seen before.

They timed their entrance as they had done before, so as to avoid the rotating of the Serthis guard that kept such close watch over this stretch of caverns. Initially there had been a concern lingering between the two explorers that they may have increased their numbers in response to the dragons' successful intrusion of their territory before. Thankfully, though, it had seemed that they had been sufficiently stealthy and not left a trace of their prior presence; there was no major increase in the number of Serthis that lurked in the caverns as best the devoted Nocturne and adventurous Snapper could tell.

"All clear, Darimi?" Xelis whispered. Such was her eagerness that she was impatiently shuffling her weight from one foreleg to the other as she awaited her companion's response. Just as before the Nocturne was marginally ahead of her, poking her slender head around the tunnel corner to make doubly sure they were safe to proceed. A few silent moments later she turned back to Xelis and nodded. Before Darimi had a chance to verbally respond she was almost knocked over by the enthusiastic Snapper as she hurried past into the cavern ahead. Flaring out her wings in an effort to steady herself, Darimi managed to avoid falling down entirely. After she took a moment to catch her breath she chuckled fondly.

"You'd think I'd be used to your enthusiasm by now," she commented, jokingly.

"Come on, Darimi, you can hardly blame me this time - we're on the verge of an incredible discovery, I know it!" Xelis replied, beaming brightly from ear to ear.

She turned back around as Darimi moved over closer to where she was. She glanced over the cave floor on which their feet rested. For all intents and purposes, it looked entirely normal. Xelis lowered her head and lightly sniffed at the rocky ground, an act that Darimi mimicked in due course. Neither dragon could discern anything about the ground from sight or scent that made it any different from that found in any other cave system the two had ventured into or logged before. But, just as Darimi had noticed upon their last visit, a knock of the Nocturne's talons on the ground revealed the very thing that had so compelled them to return; there was some sort of empty, hollow space beneath the ground on which they stood. Xelis tapped the ground several times with one hefty foot, as though to reaffirm that realisation was correct; the subtle echo it generated confirmed that suspicion. She straightened up and looked to her partner, flexing her wings a little as she tried her best to contain her burning inner anticipation.

"What could it be?" Darimi asked her with a light tilt of her head, resting her wing's claws on the ground either side of her for better balance as she pondered the possibilities of just what might lay beneath their claws.

"I would surmise that it's a cavern network yet lower than this one," Xelis suggested, thoughtfully. "Given the Serthis concentration in these caves and tunnels one could forgive explorers for not having found that out before we managed to sneak this far down… that said, however, when we logged this stretch of the caves the last time we saw no such way further down than this."

"In that case, we should do our best to venture further than our previous visit," Darimi replied. "I would suggest that we shouldn't concern ourselves with logging our surroundings this time in order to prioritise this potential discovery. We can't afford to waste time here."

"I couldn't agree more, Darimi," Xelis responded with an enthused nod of her heavy head. She looked onward unto the linear expanse of the cave before them. "Stay alert. We _need_ to find out what lays beneath this cavern, but we must not let our guard down."

The two dragons hurriedly ventured forth with their sheer determination fuelling their progress. They lowered their voices to hushed whispers as they advanced; their quiet but excited chattering oh-so delicately graced the cavern walls in the subtlest of echoes. They each cast their eyes over each and every inch of the cave ground and walls around them for anything different or any possible sign that there was a way of progressing down yet deeper than where they were. Xelis lightly sniffed the air at intervals as they moved, both to suss out anything that might be of note to them but also in order to discern whether or not there was danger either ahead of them or behind. Thankfully, however, their exploration was not interrupted.

What seemed like hours passed, though in reality it had been mere minutes. The two had grown quieter now with the exception of the occasional sparse questioning uttered beneath their breath. Xelis had slowed down now; it was unclear to Darimi as to whether this was done so that she could be more thorough with her searching or simply out of frustration. The Nocturne observed as her companion heavily stomped one of her heavy feet against the cave floor with some force. The echo of the hollow space beneath it that they were trying to find their way into tauntingly answered back.

"I don't understand. There should be some indication that the cavern branches down deeper than this - the space is right below us, Darimi," Xelis frustratedly mumbled without looking up. Her small wings were held rigidly against her plump sides; it was obvious to Darimi that, for all her excitement at the prospect of discovery, she was becoming increasingly tense at their lack of further insight into what they suspected.

"I know that. We have a little more time - we can go a bit further before we have to go back," Darimi attempted to reassure her. "Don't worry. We'll find the answer, I guarantee it."

"We can't have missed it, we can't have…" Xelis muttered as though she'd not heard what her companion had said. She stomped her foot against the rocky ground again, dislodging a small pebble which rattled across the floor a short distance before it came to a stop just ahead. Darimi sighed and raised one clawed hand to respectfully pat the Snapper's shoulder.

Xelis did not respond to her partner's gesture. Her breathing was somewhat labored. Her brain was a mess with so many questions and thoughts that she was frustratingly unable to make sense of. Being confused to that degree was not something she enjoyed. The welling disappointment of being thus far unable to make the discovery she'd been so determined to make added into the chaos whirling inside her head and made the plump Snapper visibly tremble with annoyance.

"I have to do this. I have to. _We_ have to," she quietly said, primarily to herself as opposed to her companion. An angered snort escaped her nostrils and her short tail swayed from side to side as she tried to collect herself. She took in a slow, calming breath before speaking up one more time. She looked to her partner with an expression of utmost seriousness.

"I want to try one more time, Darimi," she informed the now more apprehensive Nocturne. Darimi frowned a little but, in this state, knew she would ultimately be unable to change her partner's mind. She meekly nodded in silence as Xelis faced forward again with renewed determination. "I haven't the faintest idea what happened but what lays ahead of us may well yield the greatest discovery any of our clan, or perhaps even those outside it, has ever made! I shan't let that trickery impede our progress! Onwards, Darimi - by the will of the Earthshaker, we will press on."

As though to prove the strength of her statement to a nonexistent audience, or perhaps to back up her own confidence before it left her again, Xelis held her head high and raised one of her forelegs. This was a matter of pride now. There was a lot riding on this discovery. In her mind the Earthshaker would have been proud of one of his 'children' going so far to uncover more of what he had created; the caverns beneath them would not go undiscovered any longer. They would find them and find them on that very visit. With a final, determined snort she threw her foot down with a mightily rumbling stomp that almost seemed enough to rumble the very ground beneath her.

In the heat of the moment it took Xelis a few seconds to realise that the ground beneath her wasn't simply _seeming_ to shake - it genuinely had begun to rumble and vibrate. It seemed as though the Earth Flight dragon had gotten carried away; whatever it was she'd done it was having a far greater effect than intended.

"Change of plan, Darimi!" Xelis hurriedly shrieked. "We'd best retreat and return another day!"

Neither Darimi nor Xelis, having realised her mistake, needed any further two swiftly turned tail and moved as though to run away back from whence they had come. The limited space within that stretch of the caves made flight out of there an impossibility for Darimi, who would otherwise have taken flight the moment danger threatened. Unfortunately for the both of them, however, fate was not on their side on this occasion.

The rocky cavern floor beneath them sprouted cracks and fissures across its surface. As it continued to rumble and the two made an effort to scramble away, their footfalls seemed only to increase the rate at which the stone supporting them fell apart. Each of them emitting a last desperate shriek, they helplessly grabbed for the edges of the now open cavern floor but found nothing to hold as they fell backwards into the maw-like pit that had burst open around them. They could not make any sense of what happened next. Their senses were bombarded by an assault from all conceivable sides; the thunderous rumbling of rocky debris, the scent and taste of the dust kicked up by the fall, the painful thud that accompanied them making contact with… something.

When the rumbling stopped and everything settled, Darimi and Xelis lay in a crumpled heap; the fall had been a painful one and it took some time before they felt as though they could move again. Darimi wormed her way out from underneath her Snapper companion's weight and shakily straightened herself up, shaking her head to disperse some of the rock dust that had coated her in the fall. She leaned in close to Xelis and tentatively nudged her.

"Are you alright there, Xelis?" the Nocturne asked, worriedly. The Snapper softly groaned and made an effort to stand, wriggling her way onto all four of her sturdy legs until she was somewhat shakily able to stand up again. She winced a tad as she finally had her full weight supported upon her legs; nothing seemed to be broken but it felt as though she'd sprained something at least.

It dawned on Xelis once her senses had fully returned to her that this situation they were in, this peril they had fallen victim to, was entirely her fault. Were it not for her almighty stomp of the cave floor this would never have happened. Were it not for her having taken Darimi as her partner and brought her on this expedition in the first place, the dear Nocturne would not have been put in danger. She ashamedly looked up at her partner, managing to make brief eye contact before bowing her head in shame. "Darimi, I'm sincerely sorry… I let myself get carried away. I should not have let my enthusiasm take quite so much precedence as it did."

The Nocturne to whom she was speaking frowned. "You couldn't have known the floor would give way. We knew there was space beneath but we couldn't have known how thick or thin the ground between us and that space was," she told Xelis in an attempt to console her partner somewhat. Xelis gave the lightest of smiles, seemingly comforted, but ultimately she was far from happy with what had befallen the two of them.

They each cast their gaze up unto the gaping hole through which they had fallen, then down to the pile of debris left in its wake. It was by no means the sturdiest or most secure of things but it would offer the two of them a way up out of the hole if they were especially careful when climbing it. It blocked off what looked to be a substantial portion of tunnel behind it. Xelis began to smile as she realised they'd done what they'd come to do; they'd discovered a layer of tunnels even further down in the Forgotten Cave's network of caverns than anyone before them had been able to discern.

Something wasn't right, however, and when Xelis more closely looked at the open stretch of tunnel not blocked off by the hole's debris as her eyes adjusted to the low light she realised why that was. An excited shiver ran through her and the Snapper eagerly nudged Darimi's flank.

"The walls, Darimi! Look at the walls!" she eagerly whispered. Darimi followed her partner's direction and looked up at the walls of the space they had fallen into. She blinked, looked from one wall to another, as her face clouded over in a mixture of confusion and awed surprise. The walls around them were far from natural. Unlike the jagged, rocky caves above them this tunnel was quite obviously carved out by hand. The care that had been taken in constructing this tunnel was evident. It was perfectly smooth, like polished marble or granite, adorned with carved symbols and engravings in a language unknown to either of them. A glance at the floor beneath their feet revealed it to be much the same as the walls; it too was perfectly smooth except for the stray dust and rocky shards spread across it by the broken ceiling's debris.

The Snapper and Nocturne turned to face each other slowly, looking squarely into each other's eyes with nothing short of absolute shock on their respective faces. They'd stumbled upon far more than a hidden tunnel network beneath the Forgotten Cave. Both of them had realised what they'd come across, and they each knew the other had realised it; it was Xelis who finally spoke up in a hushed but urgent tone.

" _Darimi… I think we've found the Serthis Labyrinth!"_


End file.
